


blood/loss/gain

by yonderdarling



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bloodplay, F/M, Gallifrey is gone again, Knifeplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:00:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22786024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonderdarling/pseuds/yonderdarling
Summary: She finds him. It’s easier than it should have been; forget scanning artron outbreaks, time streams, setting starlight trackers - and then he makes her land on Gallifrey.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 115





	blood/loss/gain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allostatic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allostatic/gifts).



> For Kiara. Currently taking fic prompts and requests at my tumblr (nicolauda). Warnings for bloodplay and knifeplay. Trying something a little different. Hope you enjoy!

She finds him. It’s easier than it should have been; forget scanning artron outbreaks, time streams, setting starlight trackers -   
She texts O. He’s still got the same name in her phone - O Chaudri, which pings her a little bit in between the hearts. She liked O. He was nice, he was fun. He’d send her cat gifs occasionally, and she’d send back pictures of alien skies that she (well, at the time she was in that bowtie body, so he) was looking at that day.  
Anyway. She texts O’s number. The Master replies and agrees to meet. 

DOCTOR: Where? When?  
O Chaudri (Mi6’s Mulder): Where you do think?

He makes her land on Gallifrey.   
  
He makes her step out onto heat-cracked red earth and wait, as his TARDIS, in the shape of a crumbling ruined dwelling, materialises. He steps out, tall and dark and in chequered pants that would look better on her, especially in her second body (though really they’d look better on any body, he’s always been so ridiculous) and a stupid purple coat that looks sadly like something his last body would have worn, but then again she doubts Missy would do this to Gallifrey, not with the way she’d been at the end — but then again, apparently it had all been an act. There’s no way she could’ve been this close to changing when -   
  
Something boils in her veins and breaks out of her hearts, and she crosses the red earth and the singed red grass and balls her hands into fists and punches the Master in his stupid, sad mouth.  
  
He stumbles back onto the grass, falls flat on his arse and she tries to tamp down on the rage, because this is bad, and —  
  
“How are you still alive?” she asks.  
  
He squints up at her, blood dripping from his split lower lip. “I thought you knew.”  
  
“I thought you were getting better,” she says. “You cried in front of me. You told me you were trying. I believed you.”  
  
He spits out blood, coughs. “Let’s go inside. It’s very flammable out here. No good for your lungs. My lungs - used to it. I spent a lot of time here.”  
  
“I should never have contacted you. I should - why did you do this?”   
  
The Master jerks his head towards the remains of the Citadel. The great glass dome is nearly gone, melted. Even during the worst of the Time War, the bronze and gold arms that held the glass up survived. They’re twisted, limp, destroyed. There’s no trees anymore. No silver leaves, burning with sunlight. She’s had enough of fire and burnt worlds for a thousand lifetimes.  
  
“God, I’m good,” he says, and she rolls her eyes, extends her hand and helps him up. “We’ll go into your TARDIS. I don’t need you mocking mine as cosy.”  
  
“You’ve never been a cosy person,” the Doctor says, and leads the way.   
  
The TARDIS control room dims, cools as the Master enters, and he tuts.   
  
“No chance of a cuppa then,” he says.  
  
“Tell me what happened.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Why did this - why did this have to happen?” She asks, gesturing at the TARDIS doors, at Gallifrey in ruins. “Why?”  
  
He looks at her, somehow glowering from under his eyebrows even though he’s taller (by an inch, an inch) this time. “Can’t tell you now. I can smell - something on you. Different ones. Time Lords.”  
  
She scowls. “You’re lying.”  
  
The Master covers the space against them in two strides, grabs her shoulders, brings her forehead to hers. _Contact_.  
  
He’s not lying. Well, about this. She’s part of the timeline now, and she can’t see past the static in his mind; an inbuilt genetic chemical reaction. There’s rage in there too, bleeding through the static, turning her vision red.   
  
“You’re angry.”  
  
“I’m furious.”  
  
“Tell me.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Then tell me this,” says the Doctor, coming back into herself. “How did you get off that ship?”  
  
He smiles, shakes his head, his lip still bleeding. A bead of blood trickles down his chin, down his throat. It drips, lands on her coat front.  
  
“What’s the point,’ she says. “Why did I even try with you?”  
  
“You tried.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I tried, too.”  
  
“No, you didn’t. It was all a play, in the end. For survival. You’re a cockroach - “  
  
“I came back for you.” It’s a whisper that shakes her to her core.  
  
She takes a step back, shaking his hands from her shoulders. “What?”  
  
“I - “ he stops, purses his lips, shakes his head. “I had to take care of him, first. I was going to come back, to you. I was going to fight beside you.”  
  
“I don’t believe you.”  
  
“I shot myself in the back.”  
  
She laughs. “Well, you’re lying then. You’d never do that to yourself.”  
  
His mouth twists, and then he grimaces, flexing his jaw. “You’ve got an arm on you.”  
  
“You’ve got a bloody nerve.”  
  
There’s another toothy, manic smile, and blood trickles down his chin, onto her coat, down his throat. The Master shakes his head. “God, I’ve missed you,” he says.

_Snap_.  
  
She grabs his lapels and brings him down to her level, and kisses him hard. It’s messy. This body’s not kissed before, not really, and the time energy, the artron particles, in his blood sting against her lips. Their teeth clash (like, really not kissed) together and the Master uses his hands, his warm, calloused hands on her face to pull her away from him.   
  
“You’ve missed me too?”  
  
She snarls, and doesn’t know if she’s about to punch him again or kiss him, when the Master makes the decision and leans in again, kissing her deeply, slowing the pace down. His blood trickles into her mouth, bright copper and biting, almost scalding her tongue. He pushes her into the console, the edge pressing painfully against her arse. Then, he pulls away.   
  
“Where are your pets?” He asks.  
  
“Not here. Home safe.” It’s hard to get enough air to breathe with him so close. “Away from you.”  
  
“For now.”  
  
She grabs his lapel again, but this time it’s a threat. “Don’t even think about it.”  
  
The Master lifts his hand, touches the mess at the side of his mouth, wipes at the blood dripping down his chin. “Now, this feels a little unbalanced.” His pink tongue comes out like a snakes, licks at the cut.  
  
“You’ve thirty kilos and an inch on me now.”  
  
He smiles, all teeth, all manic, all anger, all holding her gaze. “You know that’s not what I meant. And I could still get the better of you when it was the other way round.”  
  
She runs her thumb through the blood on his face, trying to wipe it off. It just makes it worse, trickling down her thumb, making trails along her palm, down her wrist. She gives in, lowers her thumb to her mouth and licks his blood off, feeling the way it crackles along her tongue, loving it, relishing -  
  
The Master catches her wrist, twists it in his hand. “As I said. Unbalanced. Unfair. You’ve something of mine.” From an inside pocket of his stupid purple coat, he brings out a knife. It’s a small, cruel thing, curved and made of an oily-looking metal - “Something of yours. Blue-giant steel, forged in the star’s heart.” he says. “Self-sterilising.”  
  
He still has her hand, and holds her gaze until she nods, and then he brings the knife down to the tip of her thumb. He traces it down the curve, light as a feather, settles the knife’s point in the fleshy mound at the base. There’s a pinprick of pressure, and blood wells quickly along the neat cut he makes across to the other side of her palm. The pain takes a moment to travel, and she shudders, breathes out, presses herself against him.   
  
Her hearts are pounding, and the Master drops the knife - it clatters off somewhere, who cares - and brings her hand to his mouth, draws his pink tongue along the stream of scarlet blood, never breaking eye contact with her. There’s some he misses, and it trickles across her palm, mixing with his own, dripping down her wrist, staining her sleeve,   
  
There’s something electric between them, reminding her of the red threads she used to imagine tying their hearts together, ten thousand million years ago, and the Master is right there with her, kissing her mouth again and again, pushing her up onto the TARDIS console, pushing her legs apart so he can press their torsos together. The Doctor cups his face, her blood rubbing off along his cheek, mingling with the dried blood from his own cut. The Master breathes out against her neck, bites her ear.   
  
“Can we move this somewhere I can take stock of you?”  
  
“What?” She asks.  
  
“Doctor, I’m not losing my virginity to you, again, in your fucking console room.” He pauses, hard against her thigh, his hands on her arse. “Again.”  
  
She laughs into his hair. “Really? Snap. Though I wasn’t really waiting around, I’ve been very busy.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“Seriously,” she says, as the Master licks across her hand again, and shudders. “Did you wait for me?”  
  
“No one else is worth the bother,” he says into her palm, her blood smearing across his lips. “It’s not about waiting, it’s about my personal taste. Which, is awful.”  
  
That makes her laugh, and she hates that he can still do that. Hates it, hates it, hates it. The Master kisses her palm again, makes a small noise as her blood stings his mouth, and she moves to slide off the console. He moves his hands to her waist, squeezes.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
“No, that’s not going to work,” he says, ignoring her.   
  
He shoves his hands under her upper thighs, shoves, and slings her over his shoulder with a grunt. She gasps, all the air knocked out of her lungs.   
  
“I’m not a sack of spuds,” she says, as he grabs onto her bum with one hand and the inside of her knee with the other. “I can walk.”  
  
He shifts, bumping her as he strides off into the depths of the TARDIS.   
  
“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do this?” he asks.   
  
The Doctor rests her elbow on his back, tries to push herself up. “Since last Tuesday.”  
  
“A little longer, my dear Doctor.”

* * *

Three turns and three hallways, and a flight of steps, and then one last door. The Master kicks it shut, and throws her down on the bed.   
  
The Doctor bounces, then feels like some extra modicum of her dignity has been lost that he’s still got, and that’s not fair, so she struggles up off the bed and stands chest to chest with him for a moment, taking in the length of his eyelashes, his dark eyes, the blood still on his mouth, the distinct smell that all Time Lords have that she always forgets she misses, and the way the Master always smells, like good cigars and nice brandy but also books and home, and warmth, and that’s when the Master reaches up and tucks her fringe behind her ear, his hand shaking slightly and -  
  
“I can’t wait anymore,” the Doctor says, and kisses him.   
  
It’s a free-for-all for a bit, the Master trying to divest her of her suspenders as she goes for his ridiculous coat, but they’re kissing the entire time, kissing is actually brilliant, she always means to do more kissing. The Master drops her suspenders and moves his hands to her waist, sliding them under her shirt, warm and large, up her back -   
  
“Are you trying to take my bra off?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I’ve not got one on, all my shirts come with internal support.”  
  
“Seriously?” He asks, and steps back. “I didn’t know you could get that.”  
  
She stops working on his shirt buttons, smearing blood down his front, looks up at him. “Yeah. Didn’t you? Is that why you liked the corsets?”  
  
“I liked those for other reasons,” the Master says, and pulls her shirt over her head, takes stock of her chest. “Well, those are - very nice.”  
  
“Just nice?”  
  
“Spectacular.”   
  
The Master grabs her by the waist and pushes her backwards onto the bed (only one rough blanket and a single pillow, which means the TARDIS is Annoyed, you’d think she’d be used to it by now), and slides his hands across to her trouser buttons, and gets those undone and pulls them down, which he gets caught on her boots, which she kicks off as he hurriedly unbuttons his shirt, and -   
  
“You’ve got a tummy again, I’m so pleased,” she says, and the Master smiles, soft, for one second. “I missed that.”  
  
There’s the remnants of a scar on his shoulder, from Ada’s bullets, and a more impressive thin, white scar going from the top of his left hip up to the bottom of his sternum. Definitely more recent.  
  
“Nazis?” She asks, and he shakes his head.   
  
“You have to take off an article of clothing for every wrong guess.”  
  
“I’ve got my socks and my knickers.”  
  
The Master grins, standing above her, unbuckling his trousers, kicking off his own shoes.  
  
“Shaving accident?”  
  
“No.”  
  
(That’s one sock, gone.)  
  
“Sneezed holding a cheese-grater while cooking naked.”  
  
Giving up on his trousers, the Master grabs her shin, runs his wonderful hands along to her foot, cups her ankle and peels her other sock off.  
  
“I don’t get an answer?” she asks.  
  
“You have one more guess.”  
  
For a brief, horrible second she wonders if it’s from when he razed Gallifrey, outside (it’s just outside) to the ground. He must see her face change, or their minds are still a bit entangled, because he shakes his head. The fury is back, but the Master is on top of her, his trousers half on and half off, sinking his teeth into the corner of her neck and shoulder, his hand cupping the blade of her hip, and there is honestly, horribly, nowhere else in the universe she’d rather be. And yet -   
  
“No,” says the Doctor, and the Master stops stock-still, his mouth on her jugular, body warm and weighted on hers.   
  
“What?” He asks, propping himself up on his elbows, looking down on her. His mouth is covered in blood, his and hers, his hair’s a mess; his eyes are black and Gallifrey is just outside, still in ruins, back on fire.  
  
“I saved you,” she says. “And Gallifrey. No, I can’t do this.”  
  
The Master rolls off her, sits up, looks down at her face. “What?”  
  
“Why - did you do this?”  
  
“I told you, you can’t know yet. You’re part of things now. You - you know that. You understand that. It’s fundamentally part of who we are, to understand that. Intrinsically.” The Master wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “Why - “  
  
She sits, too, faces him. Looks down. “Put your pants on. Properly. And your trousers.” Penises kind of look ridiculous, from the outside, when you don’t have one any more.  
  
He does, bloody and befuddled. “Don’t tell me this is about ho - Gallifrey.”  
  
“It is.”  
  
“I did that - “ and he jerks his head back towards the console room, the doors outside, the doors to Gallifrey, blimey, he did spend too much time with the Australians. “For us.”  
  
“I thought you said you did it for me,” she says, and he shakes his head and covers his face.   
  
“You grow tits and you get a conscience,” he says, and the Doctor shoves him in the shoulder, stands, starts gathering her clothes and putting the back on. “You know I can’t tell you.” 

Shirt. Fine. Where the hell is her coat? Forget the coat. She’ll find it later. “Well, there’s a lot of things you can tell me, and yet you don’t. Or you just lie.”  
  
Where are her knickers? Ah, she’ll just put her trousers on and worry another time. She gets blood from her hand all over her pant leg as she does so, hearts thrumming, pumping blood out faster than she can probably afford to lose.   
  
“You’re the one who didn’t even check. You dump it back out of the Time War and make all those sad faces in the rain - “  
  
“I don’t make sad faces in the rain!” Any more.   
  
The Master stands, and tries to look dignified, which is difficult when your boxers are zipped into your fly. “Doctor - “  
  
“Get out,” she says. “I had a question for you, and you’ve completely failed to answer it. There’s no need for us to see each other.”  
  
“Doctor - “  
  
“Get out!”  
  
He looks her up and down, and then does. He doesn’t even stop for his shirt or shoes, he just strides out of the room, slamming the door behind him.  
  
“Fine,” says the Doctor. She looks at the bloody mess on her trousers and on her hand, and her wrist, and if that’s meant to be equal to what she did to his face, he definitely should not have gotten a better mark in their Junior Principia Mathematica class at the Academy way back when. “Shit,” she adds, and sits on the bed. She’s cold.  
  
The worst part of the Master being the only Time Lord her friends tend to meet these days (why couldn’t Romana - oh God, Romana, and Brax, and - they survived the war and the Master’s just turned around and - ) is they don’t get, that it’s well possible to miss a person while they’re in the same room as you.   
  
Missy, had you know, at least she’d seemingly tried to fool her - and then there was this one’s claim that he’d come back for her, and he’d shot himself in the back (the Master would rather die than lose, she knows that for a fact, as much as she knows his left heart is always the first to go into arrest as he dies in her arms) and -   
  
The door opens again. The Master enters, still shirtless and scarred, sits at her feet between her legs, takes her bloodied hand.  
  
“I told you to leave.”  
  
“Well, I’m back,” he says.   
  
In his left hand, he turns her hand over to where he cut it. He places it on her own knee, palm-up, and takes the first-aid kit he brought back in, opens it, finds a packet of gauze.  
  
“I can fix myself.”  
  
The Master wipes up the blood. “I didn’t do it for me. “  
  
Parts of her wrist are stained red, that’ll need soap and water. As she watches Master takes a wrapped scalpel from the kit, takes it from its case, and draws it over his own palm, in the same manner he’d cut her hand. He holds it up, and blood wells over the cut, scarlet on his darker skin, rich, beautiful -   
  
“I didn’t do it for you,” he says, and he’s holding her gaze with eyes as dark as the gaps between stars.   
  
Her skin prickles and something deep in her animal hindbrain, in the synapses and chemicals and the neurones that make a Time Lord, they make her lift her own bloodied hand and press it to his, and there’s a sting along her arm as their blood mingles, and the breath is knocked from her and she knows, but she can’t let herself think about it because time might split right between her eyes, and instead as their hands are pressed together, the Master kisses her on the lips, long and slow.   
  
She interlaces their fingers. He breaks the kiss, tips his head until their foreheads brush. There, in the edge of her consciousness, he whispers the truth and the reason, which is the truth, and she can almost forgive him there and then.  
  
“I never ask for your forgiveness,” the Master says, and withdraws, sitting at her feet. “I know how freely you give it to me.”  
  
The moment’s done, and he’s got more gauze and sterile wipes, and he’s cleaning their mixed blood off her hand, and taking a pre-threaded suture needle -   
  
“Do you want numbing cream?”  
  
She shakes her head.  
  
“Last chance,” he says, and begins to stitch her up. “You’ll fix me next, right?”  
  
“Of course.”

* * *

She’s in the console room by herself, sitting on the floor, leaning on the console as it whirrs and hums soothingly. It’s warm and quiet and peaceful, and she can almost pretend Gallifrey outside is whole anew.   
  
“He’s still here, you know. He’s in the shower,” she says, and the TARDIS makes a low whir, but the lights stay on. “Well. Good.”  
  
“He’s not in the shower,” says the Master, coming up the ramp. “Hi.”  
  
“Hi.”  
  
She pats the floor next to her, and he sits down beside her, pressing their thighs together. She admires the job she did on bandaging his hand.  
  
“I just re-did this,” he says. “It got wet in your shower. Pressure was all unsteady.”  
  
She’s can hear him, but she’s not listening. “In the Vault,” the Doctor says, staring at their bandages. “Was that real? On the ship - what you said before - “  
  
“Doctor - “  
  
“Just say yes or no. Were you coming back?”  
  
He says neither, just nods. “It was. Tried. I tried.” He pauses. “You know, while I was in Australia, I had a side-hustle repairing local’s solar panels? The government wouldn’t help them.”  
  
“Hm.”  
  
“I’ll tell you the truth for the next five minutes,” he says quietly. “Four minutes fifty-five.”  
  
“You tried to come back? With the Cybermen? You tried to stop - “  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“How did you escape that ship?”  
  
The Master laughs, and he’s so handsome. “Doctor, you only have five minutes, and we both know you can never follow those stories.”  
  
“How did you get that second scar?” The Doctor draws her hand across his torso, rests her hand on the base of his sternum. “That one.”  
  
Now he grimaces. “Blame Enoch Powell,” he says. “I went for a walk of an evening in 1968 - I stayed in France, for most of that little holiday you gave me, on Earth, but I decided to drop into Birmingham - “  
  
“You had the whole world and you chose Birmingham - “  
  
“There’s a fantastic piano bar near New Street Station. You should go there sometime, before 1975. Well. Anyway. I was on my way out, and a group of men jumped me. Funny,” he says, and looks at her straight-faced, eyes dark. “You leave me to the Nazis atop the Eiffel Tower, and I escape that unscathed, but I’m two lagers in and a bunch of skinheads drag me into an alley.”  
  
“I did feel a little guilty about that. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Hm.” The Master looks at her, and she holds his gaze. “As always,” he says, gentle. “I forgive you.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“You have two minutes left, Doctor,” says the Master. “You can ask about Gallifrey again, if you’d like.”  
  
She shakes her head, leans in and kisses him. He cups her face, runs his thumb along her cheekbone, holds her head so she looks into his eyes.  
  
“I don’t regret what I did,” he says.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“When you know why — you won’t either.”  
  
“I sincerely doubt that.”  
  
“Two minutes, Doctor. Any other questions?”  
  
She’s tired, and she’s furious with him, but he’s here for her to be furious with. So, she kisses him gently, and it stings, but this time it’s behind her eyes. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you found it interesting! Comments are always appreciated :)


End file.
